Without Kapono, Heat's Jones shoots down Bulls

Playing without the sweet-shooting Kapono, Jones scored 14 of
his 23 points in the fourth quarter as the Heat exacted a
measure of revenge on the Chicago Bulls with a thorough 103-70
victory.

Shaquille O'Neal scored 24 points and fell one rebound and two
assists shy of a triple-double for Miami, which has won five of
its last six games.

"I think now we're (one game) out of that fourth spot (in the
conference)," O'Neal said. "So, we just want to keep gaining
ground and hopefully teams ahead of us keep sliding. We're
finally playing good basketball instead of running all over the
place."

A 6-8 forward who always has had a sweet stroke, Kapono has come
into his own this season. Playing off superstars Dwyane Wade
and O'Neal, he has used his spot-up skills to shoot a
league-leading 51.3 percent from 3-point range and average 11.1
points, third on the the team.

But in Monday's win over Atlanta, Kapono sprained his right
ankle and an MRI revealed a bone bruise. A mid-season pickup
from Memphis, Jones picked up the slack by doing his best Kapono
impression, shooting 8-of-11 from the field - including 6-of-8
on 3-pointers.

"(Jones) gives a different dimension," Miami coach Pat Riley
said. "As a defender, he really competes at the position and he
made about six real nice trigger passes into Shaq tonight. ...
What a jewel find for us. We really needed him."

Jones admitted he felt like he could not miss.

"It looked like a peach basket - real big," Jones said. "It
felt good. I got wide-open shots. Shaquille did a tremendous
job of swinging the ball out and kicking the ball out."

O'Neal played one of his strongest games of the season, creating
many of his teammates' open shots and nailing 12-of-18 shots
from the floor for the Heat, who shot 55 percent (43-of-78) from
the field and 10-of-23 from the arc.

Miami had lost all three meetings with Chicago this season,
including a 108-66 trouncing here on Opening Night that took the
luster off the championship rings that were handed out prior to
that contest.

"I think this time we took them a bit more serious," O'Neal
said. "We knew we owed this team. They hate us for some
reason, which is fine. They use us a steppingstone so we just
had to let them know that we're still there."

"We had to confront a team, basically, that outscored us by 17
points, outrebounded us by 15 rebounds a game, outshot us from
the free-throw line, 85-58," Riley said. "They just dominated
us in three games. It was like they toyed with us."

The Heat turned that around on Wednesday, running away from the
Bulls in the fourth quarter, outscoring them, 33-14.

In his first game since netting a career-high 48 points on
Sunday, Ben Gordon scored just 14 on 6-of-18 shooting for
Chicago, which shot just 35 percent (26-of-74).

"It was kind of shocking, they came out and their effort just
hit us in the face," Bulls coach Scott Skiles said. "We had no
response for it; we could not go with them to that level they
were playing at. We tried to mix it up with different lineups,
and we got close in the third, but we shot ourselves in the foot
with turnovers again."